Getting a superhero education in Oregon

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The University of Oregon may have lost its controversial first game of the 2009 season on the blue monster to Boise State, but they will be concentrating on a different type of monster soon -- the superhero culture -- as the school plays host to ‘Understanding Superheroes,’ a two-day conference on Oct. 23-24 that will discuss the world of superheroes.

The conference will be held alongside the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s fall exhibition ‘Faster than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of a Superhero’ and is free to attend, but you have to register in advance.

Guests will include keynote speakers Danny Fingeroth, Charles Hatfield and Henry Jenkins, while comics creators Kurt Busiek (‘Astro City’), Greg Rucka (‘Gotham Central,’ ‘Whiteout,’ ‘Queen & Country’); and Gail Simone (‘Deadpool,’ ‘Birds of Prey,’ ‘Welcome to Tranquility’ and ‘Wonder Woman’) chime in with an interesting panel about writing the contemporary superhero.

With other panels like Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology and Secret Identity Politics: Religion, Ethnicity and Superheroes, this seems like it’ll be a pretty cerebral event focusing on the psyche behind why we like comics and other pop-culture phenoms like video games. For those who make their own comics or may want to be part of the process, it might be a great road trip up to Oregon. And the Ducks play Washington in Seattle that weekend, so the campus should be in a good mood.

-- Jevon Phillips

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